MK Elkin Again Suspected Of Putting Thumbtack On Zoabi’s Chair

The minister dismissed the accusations and said Zoabi was trying to generate attention, play victim, and exacerbate ethnic tensions, which he called dangerously irresponsible.

Jerusalem, July 19 – Minister of Absorption and Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin of Likud faces accusations for the third time of placing a thumbtack point-up on the plenum seat of Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi.

Zoabi leveled the charge this morning (Sunday) at a committee meeting, and accused Elkin of harassment and assault, which Elkin denies. Zoabi said she returned to her seat in the main Knesset chamber to retrieve some documents and found the thumbtack on it, and that two Knesset workers placed Elkin in close proximity to her seat several minutes before.

Elkin has not denied his presence in the chamber at the time, but insists he did not stop anywhere near Zoabi’s seat, which is on the opposite side of the room from his own. The minister dismissed the accusations and said Zoabi was trying to generate attention, play victim, and exacerbate ethnic tensions, which he called dangerously irresponsible.

In May 2014,  Zoabi and fellow Balad Party legislator Jamal Zahalka said they saw Elkin, then the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, suspiciously stoop as he passed behind Zoabi’s chair, and Zoabi said she later nearly sat on a thumbtack in that chair. The pin had by then overturned, presumably after the chair was jostled by other passers by, and caused no injury. At the time Elkin called the charge absurd, saying he was not even in the chamber that day, having taken a group of American Christian Zionists on a tour of Judea and Samaria.

The following month, after Elkin’s appointment to the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Zoabi again said Elkin had placed a thumbtack on her chair, and that this time she had suffered a minor injury as a result. Elkin angrily denied any such activity, and contended that Zoabi was trying to deflect attention from her own ugly actions, having refused to call the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys terrorism. In both cases, video surveillance of the Knesset chamber showed no evidence of Elkin stopping at Zoabi’s seat, nor of anyone else doing so at a time when placing a thumbtack would have been discovered as charged.

The current iteration of the accusation sparked heated reactions from other MKs, largely along party lines. Meretz and Joint List legislators rushed to Zoabi’s side and repeatedly invoked racism, oppression, harassment, and lawlessness on the part of Elkin and his Jewish peers. The few Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Jewish Home MKs who weighed in on the matter expressed doubt as to the veracity of the accusations and lamented the distraction that the charges were likely to generate. “We don’t need more stupidity in this building,” commented Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked. “In any case, Ms. Zoabi does not need to actually sit on a thumbtack and pierce her backside to qualify as an asshole.”